[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison: Engaging Peace is pleased to publish the second in the ongoing series from Dahlia Wasfi‘s book, Liberate THIS]
My father was born and raised in Basra, Iraq. Graduating from Baghdad University, he earned a government scholarship to study in the United States. He completed his graduate studies at Georgetown University.
While in DC, he met and married my mom, a nice Jewish girl from New York. Her parents had fled their homeland of Austria during Hitler’s Anschluss and emigrated to the United States. Was it love at first sight? I don’t know, but my sister was born in 1969, and I arrived in 1971.
To pay back his scholarship from Iraq, my father taught at Basra University from 1972 to 1977. Thus, my early childhood was spent in both Iraq and the United States. For me, the bombing of Basra was equivalent to the bombing of Yonkers, New York. I had family in both places.
Upon returning to the Swarthmore College campus for the spring semester, I was dumbstruck by what I remember to be a mostly pro-war atmosphere. The militancy was in stark contrast to the peaceful traditions of its Quaker founders who established the school in 1864.
The Quakers, a Christian denomination also known as the Religious Society of Friends, are known as a peace church, because of their teachings’ emphasis on pacifism. While Swarthmore no longer has any religious affiliation, it prides itself on being an institution that still reflects many Quaker values. As the current brochures describe, “Foremost among [these values] is a commitment to the common good and to the preparation of future leaders who will influence favorably a changing and complex world.”
In the early months of 1991, as far as I could tell, Swarthmore was a breeding ground for warmongers. Flags and pro-military banners hung from the dorms of Parrish Hall, the main building on campus. Their messages remain burned in my memory. On a white sheet, students had written, “By Air, By Sea, By Land: Bye-Bye, Iraq.” Hanging from the next window: “U.S. Troops: Simply the Best.” They made me cringe. The blatant disrespect for the lives of Iraqi victims was sickening to me.
I thought, what the hell is going on? Why didn’t the best and brightest understand that war is unacceptable, no matter who is directing the tanks? Why was the anti-war sentiment drowned out at this “liberal” institution?
Internally, I condemned the hypocrisy of militancy on a campus that purported to reflect peaceful traditions. But the Swarthmore disconnect between image and reality was mirroring the hypocrisy that I despised within myself. I was living the American dream at one of the top—one of the most expensive—schools in the nation. Meanwhile my government rained down terror in the form of cruise missiles on Iraqi families.
Dahlia Wasfi